[PSLE MT] PSLE less weightage in Chinese / Mother Tongue

[corneyAmber]

Ok this version is clearer. Phew!! But now it states 5 to 15 years... CNA n ST not in syn?? :lol:

[vlim]

anyway is time to let the heat cool down la..... is always not easy to be a decision maker :imconstipated:

[3Boys]

Why on earth did they take so long to clear the air though? If they did not want to move on the weightage, why burn so much political good will? Such faux pas are usually corrected within hours, let alone weeks. I still get the feeling they wanted to test the reaction on the ground…

[verykiasu2010]

press conference on Tuesday, May 11

Good morning everybody.
I called this morning’s press conference to explain the Government’s thinking on the
question of the mother tongue language or as MOE calls it “MTL”.
Let me first outline my key points before I explain the background and what this
issue is about and what the way forward is. The first point is – Mother Tongue
remains crucial. It is the foundation of our educational system, has been for many
years and will continue to be, and we have no intentions of changing that.
Secondly, we are not reducing the weight of Mother Tongue languages at PSLE. I
put that directly to address a lot of concerns that have arisen. That is not going to
change but there are things we have to do to the examinations and to the teaching of
mother tongue. We have to update the curriculum, we have to update the teaching,
we have to update the examining of Mother Tongue languages because our
language environment in Singapore is changing and we have to adapt to that. We
have to fit the diverse backgrounds and aptitudes of our students in schools. That
means we have to customize our content and it means we need more resources for
Mother Tongue and particularly, it will mean we need more Mother Tongue teachers.
How we are going to do this is still work-in-progress. MOE is reviewing the teaching
of MTL. We have set up a Committee chaired by Ho Peng (Director-General for
Education) and they are in their preliminary stages of their work, studying the
different methodologies which other countries and other systems have used and
tried out for teaching languages. I think they have got some ideas but they will need
some time to come up with specific recommendations on the way forward.
So that is where we stand. Mother Tongue is the cornerstone, the weightage is not
going to be reduced but the teaching and examination will have to change and
improve. MOE is working on it and it will take some time.
This issue became hot after Minister Ng Eng Hen gave a media interview about 3
weeks ago. It created fears that the Government was reducing emphasis on the
Mother Tongues in schools and particularly beyond that, that it was really lowering
the status of the Mother Tongues in our society. Today Minister Ng and I will outline
the Government’s policies and plans for Mother Tongue languages so that the public
and especially the parents and students know where the Government stands and
where we are going on this.

I see a positive side in the public responses. There has been agitation and there has
been fear and I think we need to calm this down. But there has also been strong
support for the Mother Tongues languages which in fact reflects the success of our
bilingual policy.
Had it not been for the bilingual policy producing a whole new generation of
Singaporeans who are competent in and proud of their Mother Tongues, I do not
think we would have had this reaction. And the government shares the same goals
as many of those who has spoken up – to maintain a strong emphasis on Mother
Tongue languages, to keep our bilingualism alive and ultimately to create the best
environment to give our students and our children the best headstart in life.
How to do that we have to discuss carefully and there can be different views but I
think as overall objectives, we share those. Our system for teaching Mother Tongue
is not perfect. We would not claim it so, we have worked hard at it but it still has
many issues. But I think to be fair we have upgraded, updated and improved it
significantly over the years and repeatedly over the years. People say too often but
we have done reviews every few years. I chaired one in 1999 and MM was
personally involved in one about 5 years later and now we are talking about a review
again. The changes come quick because when we are talking about education, 5
years is not a long time. First you have got to have the ideas, the concepts, the
directions, then you get the materials and you train your teachers, then your teachers
implement it, then gradually year to year the students progress and finally many
years later, maybe after all the officials who have started this have retired, then the
students start to take examinations – PSLE, O levels and so on. Therefore 5 years
is actually very fast because before the last one has finished, the next one has
already begun. But it is necessary to do this because our environment is changing
quite rapidly and we have to keep on looking ahead so that we stay ahead of the
curve and abreast of the situation. It puts a very heavy load on our teachers, on the
systems. I would give full credit to them for the great efforts which they have made in
understanding what we are trying to do, in doing a very difficult job in the schools
and in the education ministry, and I would say significantly improving the way Mother
Tongue has been taught in the schools. Had we not made all those changes over
the years, I think today we would already be in a very serious jam. We have made
the changes, the teachers have tried their very best to adapt. I have seen what they
have done to try to be creative, to try and be innovative, to try and make the
materials interesting and fun, to engage the students. I think that while it is still hard
work, it has made a big difference.
But we have to keep on adapting and building on what we have achieved. Why?
First of all because the language environment is changing among our population and
changing very rapidly. Already amongst the Chinese, the majority of parents of
Primary One students are predominantly English speaking at home. For Malay and
Indian parents, the proportions are lower, but similarly growing. But also because
there is new research and new thinking around the world, discovering better ways to

teach languages, better ways to learn languages. We have to make the most of
these new ideas and adapt them, incorporate them into our systems. We cannot
copy them because our requirements are different, our society is different. You are
learning a language which is not a foreign language but a language which is alive in
our society and we are trying to keep it alive in our society. But I think there is a lot
we can learn from the way people are teaching, are examining languages, are
bringing students to successively higher standards of proficiencies and we should
take full advantage of that.
Thirdly, of course, IT changes a lot of things and including the teaching, learning and
testing of languages. It is happening everywhere in the world, even in China and it is
not just a matter of using a ball pen (stylus) instead of using a Chinese brush (毛笔).
People go on the keyboard and have all kinds of new ways to type in words and for
expressing themselves. They use the language in different ways. They do not write
long letters, they write emails, they have SMSes in highly informal language, all sorts
of strange colloquialisms and abbreviations which purists frown upon and which
probably is not a good thing to learn if you are learning the language and you want to
get the proper form. But you have to know that this is the environment and we have
to teach the students cognizant of this environment because that is how they are
going to use the language. And that is how we should prepare them so that what is
learnt in class is relevant to what they will use the languages for in life after they
leave school or even while they are in school in their social lives and at home.
We are carefully considering how these trends will affect MTL teaching and we need
to start thinking about the next phase now so that in 5 or 10 years time, we will be
ready with changes, beginning to implement changes that will keep Mother Tongue
relevant to this new situation. We place a lot of importance on this because Mother
Tongue is not only core to the education system but to our conception of what kind of
society we are, what sort of ethos pervades Singapore, who we think we are. We
are not just people who came from other space who have learnt English but we have
histories, we have heritages, we have identities. We have adapted to the modern
world and we are working with English but Mother Tongue is an important part of us
which defines us and at the same time links us to the world we live in – Asia, India,
China, Southeast Asia. It places us so that we are centred so that we do not feel
that we are always off balance and a slightly second-class copy of somebody else.
We are ourselves, proud of it.
And so it is not just a matter for MOE. This February, a couple of months ago, we
had a major meeting here – MM, myself, Minister Ng, all the ministers in MOE and all
the key officials in MOE concerned with Mother Tongue teaching – for Chinese, for
Malay, for Tamil, 50-odd in all. We spent about 2 hours and had a very intense and
useful discussion. The Ministers, MM and I particularly wanted to explain why we felt
this was important, why we needed to change and update the teaching of the
language, what our objectives are and how we could help the teachers and

education ministry officials to do their work better and make this a success. And at
the same time we also wanted to talk to the officials in the ministries, the supervisors
of the schools, the principals – both from the SAP schools, as well as a few from the
schools where there are a lot of children with difficulty learning Mother Tongue, to
understand what their challenges were and what their difficulties were, where they
felt that they have been successful and what the way forward was.
But it does not stop with a meeting. The Ministry has appointed a committee and the
Director-General of Education is chairing it, to deliberate this very seriously. They
are still in their early stages but they have come up with two significant inter-related
ideas which I think will guide the direction forward.
One, the idea of differentiated teaching. That means to differentiate the teaching
more, to adapt your approach and content to the different backgrounds and different
learning aptitudes of the children. If the child speaks Mother Tongue at home or
socially day-by-day, you can take one approach teaching him because he already
has the concept of what the sounds are, the grammar, the way the language is used.
You have to formalize it – he may need to learn to write, to learn the grammar more
properly, to learn the more of the formal language, the idioms which might not occur
so commonly in daily life. But the framework is already there.
On the other hand if he is coming to the language more from scratch which some
proportions of our students do, in all languages – Chinese, Malay as well as Tamil –
then you have to understand what his background is and use his background in
order to bridge the gap and teach the language which he is learning more as a
second language than as a Mother Tongue. I think that if you use the same
approach for both groups of students, you are going to have a problem and if you do
not distinguish between students who are strong in language abilities and those
students who are weak in language abilities, you are also going to have a problem.
So the first thrust which we believe will be necessary is to differentiate the teaching
and the learning of the language.
The second thrust which is related to this is to teach and to test based on proficiency
levels. What do we mean by proficiency levels? To define clearly and in detail
levels of attainments that you can verify the students have reached. For example,
can he communicate simply and directly on familiar daily topics? If he can chat with
you and discuss where he went for breakfast, whether he came to school on time,
what he is wearing, what his parents or sisters are doing – that is one level and you
can ascertain that.
Another level might be the ability to read newspapers and magazine articles and
understand them. You can verify that. It is a well defined proficiency level.
Another level may be the ability to express himself fluently in writing and in speech.
It could be an imformal presentation, or a formal speech to write and present – that is
another higher standard. If we can define more of these proficiency levels, then I

think we can get our students to go from level to level and jump from one step to the
next, instead of trying to do one high jump to the top, and if he didn’t quite hit the bar
and crashed somewhere down then I only give him 45 marks for good effort. But
actually he did not get anywhere. But if I have steps to get all the way there, and I
know he made the first, second and third step, the fourth step maybe not quite, then
there is proficiency which is verified and there is achievement from the kid who say,
yes, I know I am getting somewhere and this is something that I am able to attain. I
did not get full marks, which is the highest level that people want but I am getting
somewhere and it is not a hopeless waste of time.
We have not worked out the details but I think the approach which is needed is quite
clear. We have to cater to a varied student population, we have to develop different
material for the different proficiency levels and abilities of the students, and if we
want to do all these good things, (I can just hear the teachers listening to me,
thinking this to themselves now) then we need to provide more resources and
particularly we have to provide more teachers. We have to recruit, train and produce
more teachers so that we can have smaller classes, we can have more personal
attention to the students, more interaction in class. If you have 40 students learning
language in class, it is not possible for all of them to be practising and to be getting
attention from the teacher, correcting them, suggesting to them better ways of
putting it, helping them when they stumble over a new word or to find a new word.
If you want to do all these good things, you have to find resources, more teachers
and we will do that. We cannot do it overnight but it is something that we intend to do.
We will invest more because we believe in the importance of the Mother Tongue
lauguages.
Of course, after the teaching, it has to follow through to the examining and the
exams have to support this new way of teaching the languages. Because otherwise
whatever you may say about enrichment, about culture, about fun, about activities,
about going beyond the curriculum, when it comes close to the exams, that means 2
or 3 years from now (P3 and certainly P4) the parents, the children and the teachers
will all zero in on exams - better memorize this list, I have summarized this, this is
what has been asked in the last ten exams and if you master this, with some luck,
some questions will come out and you may score an extra half mark. I think you
have to study and focus on exams but to overly obsess on it the way some students
are doing and I think our system does not really discourage them from doing, that
can be counter-productive to the broader objectives of learning and mastering the
language that we are after. That is why we have to go through to talk about exams
and that is why when Minister Ng met the press he discussed exams which led to
this issue. We have adjusted the exam format over the years, we have increased the
oral component of the exams but basically the structure has remained more or less
the same. In the next phase we have to go beyond these incremental changes to
look critically at the examination and the grading system. How to test for proficiency,

this idea of going from step to step? How to incentivize students to make the effort to
get to the next step and how to grade their achievements fairly?
The concerns came about because of the issue of PSLE scoring. Minister Ng has
said “MTL marks count for so much in the PSLE” and some concluded we want to
reduce the weighting but we are not reducing the weighting. This would send the
wrong signal that we are downgrading Mother Tongue as a lot of the people who
have spoken up have said. But it also is probably not the best way to solve the
problem. Certainly it would not be effective in helping the student to reach the level
that we would like them to reach. Nevertheless we do need to change the way in
which we examine and grade students in order to dovetail with the other changes we
plan to make.
This new approach that we have in mind will benefit all the students. There is no
way around making the effort to learn a language. Learning a language always
takes an effort, learning a second language takes more effort and especially if your
second language and main language are very different, like English and Chinese or
English and Tamil, a bit less so for English and Malay, then it takes a lot of sweat.
There is no way around that, the students have to put in the effort and we would like
the parents to encourage and to help them. But the approach we are taking will help
us in this effort because differentiated teaching will enable us to teach each student
in the most appropriate way according to his ability and enable him to learn
according to his ability, and setting proficiency levels will give students progressive,
successive, achievable targets to aim for.
The better students can go forward and be awarded for their achievements and the
weaker students can progress to as far as their abilities will allow, reach a
meaningful proficiency level and get appropriate credit for what they have
accomplished. So in essence, we cannot have a one size fits all model. We have to
consider this new approach not just as a brilliant idea, but we have to look at it
overall, systemically from an educational point of view. How do we make a system
work with these principal considerations. From the principal considerations to the
system is an enormous amount of detailed work, experimenting, trial, preparation.
So we have to give the Director-General of Education’s committee time to do a
proper job. They should have some progress to report in a few months, but beyond
that, implementing the curriculum and the exams structure will of course take longer
– years rather than months.
Let me wind up by just saying that one of the things this debate has shown is that
many young parents want their children to do well in Mother Tongue. They want
their children to retain their cultural heritage, they want to respond to the rise of
China and India as well as the links between Singapore and our immediate
neighbours in Southeast Asia, particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia. But at the
same time the parents also want the teaching and learning of Mother Tongue
languages to improve. So it is not that the status quo is fine. They want teaching to

be more directly relevant to their daily lives, they want to capture the interests of the
students and they want to use the best educational technologies available, so that
the students can be self motivated to achieve the highest possible proficiency in
Mother Tongue languages and make the best use of their time which they spend
learning Mother Tongue languages. And I think these are positive attitudes which
auger well for the learning of MTL and for keeping ours an Asian society.

[gnoikj]

Only someone within MOE with direct involvement in this matter can explain why. My take on this is that they probably assumed (wrongly) that this move would assure them more votes in the coming elections, and were surprised by the backlash.

3Boys:

Why on earth did they take so long to clear the air though? If they did not want to move on the weightage, why burn so much political good will? Such faux pas are usually corrected within hours, let alone weeks. I still get the feeling they wanted to test the reaction on the ground.......

[3Boys]

Phew, so many words from PM....


Diversity of language teaching, should have done this 10 years ago , definitely would have helped the weaker students.

Somebody said, no more Z turns, I agree.

[verykiasu2010]

Remarks by Dr Ng Eng Hen, Minister for Education and Second Minister for Defence, at the Press Conference on Teaching of Mother Tongue Language on 11 May 2010


1There were strong reactions to my interview three weeks ago. Today, I will clarify any misunderstanding by outlining more fully what MOE’s plans are regarding Mother Tongue Languages (MTL). I will make the following points:

MOE is not reducing the weighting of MTL in PSLE. I believe that MTL are important to all Singaporeans and to our future.
The MTL Review Committee’s goal is to maintain our bilingual policy, not weaken it. The Committee has some initial ideas, which I will outline.
The review must cover the exam system. It is a critical piece that complements the other initiatives to strengthen MTL teaching.
2In my interview, I said MOE was looking at options to address the over-emphasis on exams, where “MTL counts for so much in the PSLE.” Singaporeans became concerned that MOE was proposing to reduce the weighting of MTL in PSLE. This is not the case. The MTL Review Committee has not proposed any change to the PSLE scoring system. But I should have chosen my words more carefully and apologise for creating that wrong impression.

3Despite the misunderstanding, the outpouring of support for MTL teaching to remain a cornerstone of our education system is gratifying. MOE shares this same goal. This is the reason why I appointed an MTL Review Committee headed by DGE to set a road map for the next 10 to 15 years. We need to start now, because their recommendations will take many years to implement. We have to take into account the changing language environment and the wider spread of language backgrounds and abilities among future cohorts of students.

4DGE’s Committee has been studying best practices around the world. All their studies confirm this essential point: to be effective for a broad spread of students, language teaching should aim to produce proficient users. This means teaching students to communicate with others, listen and read with understanding, and present in spoken and written forms. We have to make their learning relevant in different real life situations. This is the first requirement before the language can transmit heritage and cultural values, which we also wish it to do. To be more effective in our MTL teaching to all students, both strong and weak, we therefore have to change the way we teach, examine and grade our students.

5Two general directions are clear. First, we need more differentiated teaching—i.e. teaching different groups of students to the appropriate levels. Students who are weaker in MTL will benefit from this. Second, our system needs to be more proficiency based—i.e. geared to recognise and reward students when they attain specific proficiency levels. For example, China’s HSK is one such system of proficiency levels. (A description of HSK proficiency levels is provided in the Annex).

6This new approach will need more resources. We will need better teacher-student ratios, which means recruiting more MTL teachers. In-service teachers will need retraining. The curriculum has to be expanded with new textbooks and more IT modules and other digital resources.

7Our exams must also change. I shared what parents and teachers said, “If your assessment system doesn’t change, even if you change teaching methods, it’s unlikely to achieve the goal of making MTL more functional, more usable, more alive for the student”.

8Motivating students solely through exams is not sustainable and discourages many students who actually have done quite well in their MTL. The Singapore Chinese Teachers Union agreed with me that exams should not be the main driving force. So did teachers from the Malay and Tamil language unions, when they met SPS Masagos and SMS Iswaran. Students can count on our MTL teachers who are passionate about their mission and have been working doubly hard to maintain MTL standards in schools. They too want to move away from an over-emphasis on exam performance as it does not help in their goal to get as many students possible to be proficient in MTL.

9How we then reward effort is important. The overall MTL assessment should depend more on how they would use the language in real life, e.g. oral and practical communication skills, reading and responding to mails and messages, understanding notices, reading newspapers, or giving short presentations. In written exams, students should be able to use IT tools, as in real life.

10This shift to a more proficiency-based approach should not lower standards or reduce the incentive for our students to learn MTL. On the contrary, well-defined proficiency-based syllabi and exams will set clear and appropriate standards for students to aim for. The incentives to do well will also remain. Those who demonstrate higher proficiency deserve to score higher. Those who do not put in the effort should not be rewarded. So, students will still need to do well in their MTL to get into their school of choice.

11I have described very broadly what the Review Committee is working on. DGE’s Committee has to translate these principles into a workable curriculum and detailed course materials and tests for 500,000 students. This will take many months and the Committee will report its progress in stages. We should give DGE’s Committee time to carry on their work professionally. We will certainly discuss the proposals with the many stakeholders within the community.

12This is a long term endeavour. Any revised curriculum will have to be introduced progressively. So a revised PSLE format will only be implemented several years after that. The present batches of primary students will therefore not be affected by these changes and need not be worried. But we need to start now.

13There is tremendous support for MTL learning as a vital part of our education system. We want all students to learn their MTL effectively, and make the best use of the time and effort they put into learning the MT. We want them to use it in their daily lives, and through it, discover the benefits of being bilingual. MOE will work with the community to help as many children as possible to love their Mother Tongue Languages, then pass it on to the next generation to keep them alive in Singapore.


http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/speeches/2010/05/11/teaching-mother-tongue-language.php

SK Proficiency Levels

Level Attained\tProficiency Description
HSK Level 6\tCan easily understand what they read and listen and express themselves fluently in written and oral Chinese.
HSK Level 5\tCan read Chinese newspapers and magazines, appreciate Chinese films and television, and are able to write and deliver a full speech.
HSK Level 4\tCan discuss a relatively wide range of topics in Chinese and are able to communicate with native speakers.
HSK Level 3\tCan complete basic communication tasks in daily life, study and work. If travelling in China, Level 3 can handle most communication tasks they encounter.
HSK Level 2\tCan communicate simple and directly on daily topics they are familiar with. Level 2 have reached the advanced stage of beginner level.
HSK Level 1\tCan understand and use simple words and sentences to fulfil specific communication needs and have a foundation for the further study of Chinese

[Donkey Kong]

angmo pie lose? :?

[HyperKiasu]

Donkey Kong:

angmo pie lose? :?

dun think so. their children will benefit... it is win-win...

[lego]

Glad that the authorities have heard us. :rahrah: